Drudgery of daily living saps life of its every joy. In drudgery, I do not imply the bleakness of ho-hum chores that comprise work. Most challenging tasks fall into a pattern with numbing familiarity when performed repeatedly over a long time. Even a creative art, be it writing, music, acting, film-making, etc., that seems to promise a fresh perspective every day is just a professional work for the artist. Only those who practice it with the rigour of an artisan excel in their field and create a body of work that public admires as their contribution to the art. I use the phrase drudgery of daily living for the tyranny of work that is necessary to sustain life yet blights it simultaneously. This is the lot of most men - A life of bondage with no redemption in sight. When stuck in this station, they must work incessantly from day to night to afford the means to preserve the breath, only to wake up another day, and begin once again the life-scorching saga. Few people are fortunate t...
A friend, now nearing sixty like me, has had a guilt-laden conscience for decades. Her daughter who is a successful professional, married, and in a well-paid job, blames her mother for what she perceives as failings in her nature: fastidious personal habits, intolerance for views of others, inability to trust friends, capricious mood swings, and even her obsession with eating healthy food. Her main grouse – reinforced by similar opinion of a psychotherapist she often visits – is that my friend did not devote enough time to her when she was young, as she valued her job more. The friend cannot rid herself of the remorse - Were it not for her demanding job, would her daughter have grown into a happier, more contended, and a self-assured person? Children spawn a new life for their parents. Birth of a child is an epochal moment in their lives. Young child is dependent on the parent for all her needs for a long time, stretching for years, perhaps the longest in the biological world. It is th...
The Painted Veil: W. Somerset Maugham Make-believe and the Real Title of Maugham’s books, especially his novels, are always intriguing. A critic once poohpoohed one of his books saying it had the usual Maugham fare - a mishmash of old themes. His next story collection was titled, Mixture as Before. Title and epigraph of The Painted Veil come from P.B. Shelley’s poem Lift Not the Painted Veil. It is more profitable to read the complete poem – presuming one hasn’t read it yet – after they have finished the book. One can then variously interpret Maugham’s allusion to a painted veil. In the preface, Maugham recounts how he came to write the book. ‘I think that this is the only novel I have written in which I started from a story rather than from a character. It is difficult to explain the relation between character and plot. You cannot very well think of a character in the void; the moment you think of him, you think of him in some situation, doing something.' Idea for the s...
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